America is worryingly slipping towards a third world status when it comes to retirement income. With Wall Street holding a tight grip over the 401k systems, it's essential to understand how this affects every investor.
Wall Street’s Grip on 401ks
"A new toaster from Walmart has more guarantees than a 401k."
Wall Street’s love for 401ks is driven by the security and control it guarantees them, unfortunately at the expense of the investors’ control. The rigged system results in us ranking poorly concerning integrity and honesty in retirement systems.
The Reality of Investment Returns
Misleading statistics proliferate about expected returns, whereas the truth is the real rates of return are closer to 4% or 5% than the purported 12%. This misrepresentation by Wall Street contributes significantly to the unstable retirement system in America.
Exploring Retirement Systems Globally
When examining the world’s best retirement systems, a stark contrast emerges. Countries with top-ranked retirement systems, such as the Netherlands, Finland, and Australia, have a common theme:
- Annuity-based systems
- Defined benefit plans
- Guaranteed income bases
These nations provide pension-like securities which the U.S. lacks, leading to a lack of peace of mind for American retirees.
The Retirement Ruse
The upcoming book, "The Retirement Ruse", sheds light on:
- How stock buybacks, cryptocurrencies, and SPACs are damaging America's retirement savings system.
- 50% of all stock trading involves companies buying back their shares to increase executive compensation.
- The grim reality that many Americans will solely rely on Social Security in retirement.
Addressing the Crisis
Is there a solution? The discussion points to a brighter side, urging the integration of annuities and life insurance products to assure a guaranteed stream of income, thus providing some peace of mind in retirement years.
Conclusion
The situation calls for increased awareness and rethinking of strategies concerning retirement savings. The lessons from top-performing global retirement systems might help navigate toward more secure and reassuring retirement years.
It's imperative to understand the following:
- The necessity to save before investing.
- The significance of maintaining discipline and financial planning.
- The potential of leveraging annuities for secure retirement income.
Learn more about how you can safeguard your future in my upcoming book, The Retirement Ruse, hitting the shelves soon.
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Full Transcript
America is a third world country when it comes to our retirement income. People have to understand that the game's really rigged against them. And the thing is that they're 401k, even though people don't understand that, is really kind of cannon fodder for Wall Street. A new toaster from Wallmart has more guarantees than a 401k. The reason why Wall Street loves 401k is it creates more security and control for them. But what does that ultimately mean? It's potentially less control for the investor. In terms of integrity and honesty in the system, we've ranked the worst in the top 25. So 22 overall, but I think 25 in terms of integrity, which means that what Wall Street is continuing to do is just gambling with other people's money. If you look at the real rates of return, composite rates of return over a long period of time, it's really around 4% or 5%. You're seeing the average investor is not earning 12. They're earning more than 4%. No, that's bullshit. And when I started seeing all these private equity firms starting to buy into buying companies out and then off-shoring them into Bermuda, into the Cayman Islands, or Malta, and then they were getting to cap and reinsure us and said, this is really, this is not good. When you look at the best world's best retirement systems, and I have, they're all a newty base, they're all guaranteed income base. Is there any reason to choose a bond over a whole life insurance policy when you look at the benefits? You're talking about pirates from the head and three and talking about indexing and some of the sketchy stuff that goes on there. What do you even mean by that? And what can we learn from what you know about indexing? My point is with indexing, it doesn't protect people. It doesn't provide retirement income. So the purpose of retirement plan, first and foremost, is retirement income. It's not to gamble with it. It's to convert the work your savings into a stream of income. That's the primary reason of retirement income. Once you save, though, where should you put your money? Very welcome back to my show, not just once, not just twice, but this is our third official interview. Okay, is it really the same one? It's been three interviews. They've gotten crazy, great ratings. We've gotten great reviews. And the reason we get good reviews is your researcher. People have a ton of respect for pirates from the head and one, pirates from the head and two, your book on guaranteed income. You've been in documentaries and you're still alive. I know on an episode that we did. I was just like, how are you still alive? Because you've had people intimidate you for some of the research that we do. We're here at a conference. I'm trying to be as intentional as possible when I travel to be able to bring equipment so that I can have interviews with amazing people. When we were walking to this room, you were like, America is a third world country when it comes to our retirement income. Yes, no. You have another book that's at the printers right now called the retirement Ruse. Yes. I want to just open up this conversation and just hear your thoughts about where we are today. Some of the research that you're doing because if people aren't familiar with you, I'll make sure that our previous conversation is about your stories there. So you don't have to rehash all that. But you are a researcher and you have a nose for BS. And you're probably smelling a lot of it right now. So without further ado, where's your headspace at right now and what is your newest book on? And let's dive into some of the issues and maybe some silver linings as it relates to what we can do. Yeah, well, this whole book started out as a marketing guy, a friend of mine, Jeff and Andy and he wanted me to do a marketing project. But any, make a long story short. He said, what can we do now? We can release now because we're working on this book. I'm researching the Pirate 3, essentially for about an essence, my first book, so around 2009, so about 12, I don't know how many years, 13, 14 years, whatever the case may be. I was in the documentary, the Baby Boomer, Delama, and which is, it's doing pretty well, I guess. And so one of the things which I really realized is that America was becoming a third world country in terms of retirement savings and things like that. And so one of the things which I'm trying to make people wear the problem because this is serious. I mean, we're a third world country when it comes to retirement safety. And I think I think I asked the question, what do you think we, in the top 25 nations? Caleb, what do you think the US SEVA stands in terms of the top 25 where we are? According to what? According to the title. Oh, well, there's actually, it's not me. It's Mercer. The actual firm Mercer out of Australia. They do a survey each year on who has the best retirement plans. Okay. And we have America, so we have like the best military. We have all these things. I would put ourselves maybe top 15. Not even close. We're number 22. Okay. We actually, we slipped from 19 to 22 this year. I think we're, we're, we're, we're, same between Hong Kong and your way or something like that. And why, what makes up, what goes into that rating system? Well, there's a lot of, the lot of factors. And it's going to be in the book, the retirement rules, in which will be released probably within the six weeks. Well, I'll let you know in itself. The, the, the real reason is is, is in terms of integrity. And I think this is kind of the, the saddest fact about in terms of, in terms of integrity and honestly, in the system, we, we, we ranked the worst in the top 25. So 22 overall, but I think 25 in terms of integrity, which means that what Wall Street's continued to do is just gambling with other people's money. Yeah. Okay. And this is why the book is, the subtitle of the book is, how stock buybacks, cryptocurrencies, and unicorns and SPACs essentially ruin the retirement savings system in America. And they have, and, and the fact of the matter is, is that more than 50% of all trading Caleb is actually companies buying back their shares to increase the executive insider compensation. And I guess if I was CEO, I'd want my company to be buying, back my stock as well. But my point is that it's, it's really, we're, we're cut, we are a third world. There was another study done by the, she was the Alliance for Lifetime, Minkamitz, a trade group, and it's actually just released by this economist and, there's Napoli. In terms of, this is, this is the real tragedy of this roughly 30.2 billion, a million, America's a retirement train now 2025, 2030, and two thirds of them Caleb, all I get is so security. I mean, we're up the paddle without a creek. And so one of the things that I'm really passionate about is that, you know, helping my intention, if you will, you know, and, and I'm not doing this about me, okay? Because it wouldn't, I couldn't do it if it was just about me. So it's really about, for people like you who were there, you know, going to be passing the bud time to the business. And, but also really for retirement saver throughout the US. And, you know, and, and, you know, from my office and other people, my camp family and everyone else, because we're, we're really a third world country at this point, is when it comes to retirement, it's like, unless you're really wealthy or unless you're a government employee, but that's, it doesn't. So what's going to happen? I think that's the, I mean, that's obviously the question that I have. It's like, okay, we can say that what is actually going to happen? And in according to your research, obviously you don't write a book on just one theory. What are some of the research that you're looking into that you're able to say this? And what is the retirement rules in a nutshell? Like, obviously we want to buy the book, but if you had to explain your thesis of the retirement rules, is it just literally to say we have no hope? Or is it to be like, hey, like this is, this is where we're at, but this is what we can do because of this situation. Well, there's always hope. You always have to have hope, you know, and I'm a Christian. I, you know, I've said on national TV, an action-natured, the most important thing in my life is God, but it's always hope. But the thing is really to make people wear the problem. And I think that's really why I'm trying to expose person, and then given the solution using insurance companies for annuities and insurance products and so on, which really, and when you look at it, okay, and I look at all, I'm not, not to the US, but I looked at the, when you look at the best world's best retirement systems, and I have, they're all annuity based, they're all guaranteed income based, okay? So, so this sounds crazy in the United States, but if you look at the Netherlands or which like a country, which is always in the top, it's always in the top two or three or the, or the pinlin or Australian system, they're all annuity based, guaranteed income based. So, the thing is, is that people in the retirement year should have some peace of mind. Yeah. And, but instead, they have to, do, do you essentially keep working? You're saying that the countries that have the highest rated system have some type of pensions, or they figure out a way to pensionize your money. Do they put their money in equities? Are they putting their money in the S&P? Or what is their retirement system? How does it look different than the other? They're all annuity based, you're fine benefit. From the very beginning. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean most of the good ones, they're all defined benefit. Okay. And a pension plan is so security is an annuity, okay? So, the whole people say, you know, like annuities, they don't like pensions, they don't like so security. Yeah. So, if you look at the pure retirement best, the best in class, best in breed, if you will, a gym cramer, you know, best in breed, if you look at the best ones in a breed, they're all annuity guaranteed income type of base. And, and I'm not against equities, they pose a huge threat to the retirement space. Yeah. But, if you look at what people really want, and the retirement years, they won't have some peace of mind so they can, you know, travel or spend times with children or grandchildren and so forth. And, and unfortunately, a lot of people are being robbed of this. And so, if you look, but if you look at the collapse of civilization throughout history, Caleb, historical perspective, you look at the collapse of the Roman Empire, the Spanish Empire, the British Empire, the Dutch Empire, if you look, they all have the same things in common. There's too much debt, which we have, too many wars and too many fronts, which we have, and to basement of the currency. So, we have, which we have. So, so we have all three. Yeah. So, I mean, you know, is Mark Twain said, history doesn't repeat itself, but it sure rhymes. Yeah. So, we have, we have these three. I think our presence on here on the desert is to be of service others. Totally. You know, so God's give me this gift. Don't ask me how to change the oil in my car. Yeah. But I understand how these planets are. So, I want to double tap on that. Okay, so we talk about the devaluing of the currency. We talk about being in wars. We talk about some of these issues. How does a newties and life insurance benefit that? Because if the US dollars worthless, like what's a newty? Newities are going to be paying me in a stream of worthless dollars. What, I mean, obviously, we're kind of screwed. Yeah. The dollar goes away. We have bigger issues. Yeah. Are you on the train of like, hey, we should be getting into crypto. We should diversifying in other cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrencies. Or are you pretty much saying, like, what is your solution to like, if you, because again, you're not just telling me what you want to say. What, what, what should we do knowing what you know? Like, if I could download your brain being my age or being someone maybe in their 30s, 40s, from 50s, what would you do knowing what you know as or at least your money? Not investment advice. Well, I think I think person's faith, most important thing, first of all, first of all, you know, so, you know, I have my five Fs, Caleb, my first thing is most important thing is my faith. Second thing is my family. Yeah. There's my friends, like yourself. Yeah. Then fourth is physical fitness. Yeah. And that lasts in his finances. So I think really you get a higher career needs if you will. Yeah. And by the way, Abraham Maslow and I have the same birthday. So, but anyway, so I think really the faith is the most important thing first, you know, and totally. And, but I think, you know, the whole, the thing is you have to learn how to say before you invest. Yeah. But now everything's just, let's put it in the casino. And really, you know, it's really about love and caring. Learning discipline, you know, it's, you know, a lot, there's no secrets to discipline. The greatest secretive success is there is no secrets, but a lot of you just implementing discipline and savings into people's lives and things like that. And getting out of Jack, because it, you know, really from a personal perspective, there's nothing you and I can do about. Is the problem people are having a retirement issue or they're not having enough money to begin with? Both. Okay. So, so on one side, on the commulation side, we've got to figure out ways to save and invest more. Do you and you're not anti-stock market, but you have like if someone's in their 30s or 40s and say, should I put my money in the market? Should I do 401k match? Should I put a Roth IRA? Should I like, where should I put my money if I'm accumulating my money? Well, I give you my whole thing on the 401k. I always tell people that a new toaster from Walmart has more guarantees than a 401k. Okay. I guess maybe that, the thing put that on my tombstone. I didn't know Walmart sold the toasters. I guess they sell everything. So, you know, that's a new one for the better world podcast. Yeah. So, so that's, you know, so that, and then people go, you're thinking, I get it, and that's the truth. And the thing is that they have to understand that we have what would it's called the asset. Remember Dwight Eisenhower's the military industrial complex. Now we have what I call the asset management industrial complex. So, you know, so people have to understand that the game's really rigged against them. And the thing is that their 401k, you know, people don't understand that is really kind of cannon fodder for Wall Street. Now, the funny thing is we're in the Mahalam is right now, which we're very blessed to be, and so very, very grateful. But right, four or five miles from here, we're seeing Bankman Fried was running his crypto FTX empire. Now the whole thing is, and also what I want to have people do is believe in themselves. Right. You know, do the research themselves. Don't take my word for it. Do your own research. Okay. But if you look at the clowns, okay, they invested into FTX. They put 1.8 billion. Now, actually, and this isn't the book, The Retirement Rules, by the way, and I got these information from the Bank of Sea Piling, and they actually crunch base, which I use as a great database. They put 1.8 billion of other people's money was put into FTX. They didn't even, they couldn't read a balance sheet. And they put, and then 8 billion of people's money, other retail investors. So there's 11 billion. Now they're saying everyone's money is going to be made whole. We don't know yet. Yeah. Because if you look at history, it takes for it. There's a very long lag time on this stuff. But so, so the whole thing is, and you know, it's going to be some type of a digital currency. Let's face it. But this, this is just, and this, this numerous scams. And I'm not against it, but all these really supposedly smartest guys in the room with all their Ivy League MBAs and things of that, were pretty dumb. They didn't read the balance sheet. Right. I mean, this is, you know, and so how does that relate to 401k is being like, from, from the same, you're saying the same people that are making those mistakes with FTX are, well, they're using other people's money. This, this is, this is, you know, getting into the SPACs. We're kind of jumping around here. But what would freak me out is that, and the funny thing is people can go in Yahoo, and figure this out. But what freaked me out was that all these companies are going public, whether it be crypto firms or these new unicorn companies, electric vehicles, and the whole thing. And they're being dumped onto public markets. And, you know, and I'll bet you lunch on it. I would say, 80, 90% of the time, the top three or four shareholders would always be, you know, the past mutual funds being out of the state street, BlackRock, the elderly capital funds. So my point is that all these companies are going public, and when they go public, they're using their 401k money to be, to be liquefied. So my point is that people don't realize that, but their money is actually beating the Wall Street casino. And, and if I had a guess, Wall Street probably loves things like 401k's because it creates more restrictions for people to take out their money out. And so they get, they have a more, see, if I just put my money in a brokerage, okay, I could take out that money tomorrow. And again, my money has to pay taxes and all, but like the person holding onto it has less, quote unquote, control. But now if you put it into a 401k, there's restrictions, there's penalties, there's potential tax things. So you have to be 59 and a half. And so at the end of the day, what the reason why you're saying, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but the reason why Wall Street loves 401k's is it creates more security and control for them. But what does that ultimately mean? It's potentially less control for the investor. Now I got the opportunity to, I've sat down with the person that founded the 401k. And what was funny is, no, Ted, you can't, Ted's a friend of mine. Which I believe, I believe you introduced me to Ted's. I didn't, you're Ted's a good friend of mine. So and I asked Ted this and this is very interesting. I asked Ted this. I was like, what do you think is the best characteristic of the 401k is? Do you know what he said? Well, I'll answer all right. I don't want to get you in trouble. What Ted told me about one of his like the best things to the 401k was that it made it harder for people to access their money. And in a way, he's right because a lot of people in America, if they had easy access to their money, they would, they would take it all out. So his, his thought processes, the 401k's restrictions are actually an asset or a benefit. But what you're ultimately saying by saying that is like, you have no hope. If your whole benefit is that you have less control, I don't know what to say that. But, but again, we're speaking to different people. I think a lot of people that watch this show, want, they're watching, they're watching, who's going to watch our interview? It's only people that really want to go to the next level. You're not, you're not the lowest common denominator when it comes to the like people as it relates to their money, they're not watching the show for better or worse. They might, they might have the secret of life, but they're not like, they're actually not thinking about their money in this way. So maybe Ted's right. My whole point is those people do they have any help? You know, you have $200,000 at the end of retirement. I mean, what, what's that going to be with inflation? I think that's, those are conversations that no one's even having. But like, we're just totally screwed when it comes to, when you actually look at the data, and when you look at where we are as a country, where you look at the value of our dollar, it's like, what are we actually going to do? I know I'm saying a ton here, but it's just very interesting to see like, how can we take this information and what do we actually do about it? Well, yeah, that's, you know, that's what I'm doing. I mean, you know, I think you, this always life is just tough on everyone. You want them to, like, it's the piss out of everyone, you know, beat you down. Okay, we ain't, we ain't, we ain't, but there's always hope. I mean, you know, and who's a, I don't know if you're listening to Jordan, Jordan Peterson, you ever, you ever listen to Jordan Peterson? Yes, yes. Yeah, he's one of my phase, but any event, you know, he said, you know, I'm betting my life on, you know, and improving these things and seeing light at the end of the tunnel. So I think there's always hope. Yeah. I think guys like yourself are really an inspiration to me. I'm very proud of you for doing what you're doing. But the, you know, when you look at it, it's pretty grim, but I think we always, we also have to be grateful. If you live in the US of A, we kind of won the world's lottery and the grand scheme of things. I mean, we're in the Bahamas here. We're in this beautiful luxury hotel, which is incredible. But if you go a mile from here, you have abject poverty. So I think there's always hope on that. I think I think it's really, I don't know, having people find, you know, mind their own passion, doing what they're going to do and so forth. And work with him with a good advisor who maybe you're associated with or something. But stop living listening to the noise and really focus on what they love. Yeah. So I'm going to, before we get into Pirates of Manhattan 3, which is going to be coming out here soon, can't wait for that. Before we go on to that, I just want to, okay, so let's give people hope or let's give people the berry-dike framework. What should I be doing if I'm accumulating money? If I'm 20 to 60 listening to this, what things should I do? And then if I'm watching ready to retire in retirement, what should I do? Again, not investment advice, but I'm really going to stick you on this. I don't want to just be like, we're, we have no hope. Like, what can someone do in both of these stages? What questions should they ask? And how can they take this interview and say, hey, this is going to be a new question or insight that I'm going to do to give me more hope and hopefully more efficiency when it comes to my money? Well, the first thing about it's a lot of this Caleb. It's not brain science. Okay. Yeah. First of all, the rate of savings. Yes. Again, you know, and I, there's a, the, I wish I didn't know the organization economic cooperation development out of Pirates France, so they do it as savings rate each year. And again, you know, I think maybe in the, in terms of net rate of savings, if you live in a country like Norway, people actually say about 20% of their income. And I think we're 3% now made or flat. And actually during the financial crisis, we were actually negative. So the first thing is really is to say, you know, 15, 20% of the people say 15, 20% of their money. Yep. Which actually savings is a reflection of the heart. Like we have identity tied up in the wrong things. And so my guess would be we're overconsuming. Yes. We're overconsuming, which is creating problem number one is we're not saving enough. Yeah. So we're not, we're not saving that enough. Yes. That's really kind of a fundamental, I think it's, you know, if you, if you save, you know, you have, you, you have, your life problems up to opportunity. Right. Once you save, though, where should you put your money? Hey, it's Caleb Williams here. I'm just interrupting this video quickly to invite you to check out our NS at ball. You may have been there. We've actually revamping it. And if you are somebody that wants to learn more about is life insurance rate fit for me? Does this, and that's it makes sense? Like does this actually help me be more efficient? We've put together a 10 minute documentary style video that I can test a really, really good job giving the history why the end asset, different setups and designs that we use. And then we have an NS at ball that gives like case studies, calculators, handbooks, and so much more. We are here to serve you whether it's a conversation, whether it's education or the video. So make sure to go check out and asset.com slash bolt. Learn more. Well, obviously, if you, if you study history, I mean, you know, if you look at, it was in today's economy, where's the safest place to put money? It is with a life insurance company, particularly mutual. And there is this pros and cons of this too. But when you read it, when you do the study, which I have done, when you understand these are contracts, it's illegal. We promise to pay, you know, your death. We promise to pay this amount for the rest of your life, which are new to the lives of your, it's their legal contracts. Right. What do you say to the person that is saying, well, the stock market is average 12% and life, if I put my money in a life insurance, the IRR on that might be four or five percent. Well, that's a lot of BS anyhow, too. Yeah, that really is, you know, it kind of infuriates me. If you start smoothing the things out, then actually the two actual real firms, which Cliffwater Associates and out of Marina Del Rey in California and the House have an office and Manhattan and then another good friend of mine, Steve Church has an own actual, investment advisory firm. They did both the two studies concurrently and they didn't even know it. Actually, they used to work together. But when you look at the rates return of large pension funds, which really don't mean we can really measure because they have to, their newities are a long period of time. If you look at the real rates return in the market, they pretty much mirror 30-year treasury bills for long-term investment. You're throwing private equity in stock trade and I'm not, again, there's always going to be out of the line, it's going to make money, not disagreeing with that. But if you look at the real rates return and composite rates return over a long period of time, it's really around four or five percent. You're seeing the average investors not earning 12, they're earning more or five percent. No, it's bullshit. I love that. It's bullshit. That's what Dave Ramsey says and I think Dave with Dave Ramsey saying about debt is really good stuff. But the whole idea of the 12, now, the mutual funds, this is kind of music to their ears. There's another problem which we have now, two Caleb, which is all the indexing going on in the market. Roughly 50 percent of all foreign cave money is an index and that's what getting into the pirates three book with this real huge problem with indexing in and of itself. Before we jump on that, so we're going to talk about pirates Manhattan three and indexing, but going back to accumulation, you want to save more. And would you go on record for saying they should put all their money in the life insurance companies? No. portion. What are we talking asset allocation? First, the whole thing is you're getting disciplined down to save 20 percent. 20 percent of your all your your save, you should be in insurance and investment products. I'm not against the 401k beginning of insurance. I'm not against it. But I'm saying first of all, save because the whole thing is that if you're 30 years old, your money's in a straight jack of it in the next 30 years. Okay. Unless you're you know, you're dying, become disabled, you're coming in emergency. So again, I'm not against the 401k per se, but but really you want to have access and use on your money. And then plus it also, you know, look at really protecting, you know, if you're young family, you know, protective, but your the people really love. Yep. Would you use if you weren't if you didn't care about like business or real estate, would you use life insurance as like a bond alternative? And so it would be like a 60 40, 60, yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's it's it's superior. Okay. Yeah. I don't know if you understand permanent life insurance and how it can be structured in the benefits. I don't know why you would choose a bond over it. I don't know if you have like, is there any reason to choose a bond over a whole life insurance policy when you look at the benefits? No, I mean, no, because when you look at how, I mean, the biggest market is not the stock market. It's the bond market. Right. And that plays me in that, that is a tricky place to operate. I mean, that's it's totally volatile. So you think stocks of what, volatile bonds, I mean, yeah. So why would I try to manage a bond portfolio when I can have some like professional life company? Okay, really? And and you get all these other living benefits with life insurance that you don't get in bonds. A bond gives you a yield. And in a lot of times life insurance can get you a greater yield and it's way more diversified. Think about a fund versus one individual bond. What's more risk? Any individual diversification, but that diversification comes with other benefits. If bond doesn't have death benefit, a bond doesn't have chronic illness riders, a bond doesn't have it, all these other things, a bond in a lot of cases doesn't even give you a tax growth benefit that a life insurance policy can do. And so I look at this and say, if someone, all they did, they didn't switch anything with their 401k and all. All they did is they took their bonds and switched it out with life insurance over time. They would get a lot of more options and they would be better off in accumulation because they would have control, protection and all. But then they would also be better off in distribution if they just switched out their bond with life insurance. Any comments on that? I want to talk about this concept of them thinking in a second. Yeah, but the whole also thing, also to the volatility of bonds. I'll give you great examples. That's true. This is a true story. When I was first getting into the financial service business she was about 40 years ago. My mother had inherited a, she had roughly about $100,000 in bonds at the time and I was working. So she didn't want me to really look at this stuff. But this is back before your time, back in the 80s. And I didn't really know enough. But by the time I looked at all her stuff, she'd essentially lost over 50% of her value because when interest rates go up, the value of long bonds go down. So she got crushed. And I didn't even know. So when you look at but so that's the problem with bonds. But with, I have my money in a noody or into a life product, there's actually contraction guarantee. So you're really, you're protecting yourself against interest rate risk. Love that. All right, let's talk about accumulation. Maybe you're watching this. A lot of people are who are like entrepreneurs, real estate investors. They don't really want to put their money in the Wall Street in the stock market. You and I are saying it's not evil, but there's a lot of shenanigans. If you're that type of person, do you endorse putting a large chunk of your savings into life insurance and then borrowing against that asset to do other investing? What is your thoughts on that? It's great. I mean, it's just, I've done it myself and I think I wrote in my first book, but we just need to have a Mickey Mouse plan. It's your story. And actually, if you go to Disneyland, the fact of matter, Walt Disney got bankrupted seven times. I think it went bankrupt seven times. I think he had a nervous breakdown or two, but make a long story short. But when everyone turned them down, they thought it was crazy when he started Disneyland. They said, well, you're nuts. And this is in 1952 and he had a higher architecture firm to create the Disneyland in California. And he had to come up with like a quarter million dollars at the time. And the truth of the matter is is that when everyone turned them down, he sold his house. He had a house in Palm String like a winter house. And then he raised some money from his son of his employees. But the majority of his money came from the life policy. So we wouldn't have Disney today without the life insurance loans. So all we really need is a Mickey Mouse plan. Yeah. So I love that example. A lot of people I think have taken your research and used it in their own marketing. Including me. So thank you. Thank you for that research. And you're essentially saying if you have an entrepreneurial drive or if you see other investments, you can use life insurance as a storage place to protect, grow, save your money, and then utilize borrow against that assets to do other things. Yeah. I mean, we look at it because where we, you know, and you can't do this with the stock. You can't do this with the bond. You can, but it's way more favorable to do it. Yeah. And then, yeah, if you're getting into margin of constant, then then you're, you're really beholden to the brokerage firms interest rate. And so if you're listening to this and you're in retirement or nearing retirement and let's say all your money is in 401k IRA and maybe some savings accounts. Okay. What do you do? Is life insurance, if you're nearing retirement, do you touch life insurance at all or you just talk about annuities and talk about annuities and keeping some of your money in the market? Like what do you do? Again, not investment advice, but what kind of conversations are you having with someone that's got all their eggs in the equity basket? And now they're trying to figure out coming down the mountain and they want to maximize their time coming down the mountain. Yeah. Well, it's stupid really to, you know, if you're particularly around retirement age, because it's so bloody volatile. Totally. You know, and, you know, who knows what's in store, but we will have another market correction on that much I'm sure of. We will, because this party always comes to an end. So I think really everyone's different Caleb, you know what I mean? You just don't know, and I'm doing it so long the more I know the more I don't know. But I do know that people who have set up a guaranteed income plans for people, I have no complaints. I mean, they're delighted. So so the purpose of retirement plan, person in foremost, is retirement income. It's not to gamble. It's to convert the work your savings into a stream of income. That's that's the that's the primary reasons of retirement income. We call retirement income plans. Yeah. I think retirement should literally be called future cash flow, because then people may make different decisions. If they're like, I'm saving for future cash flow versus I'm saving for retirement. No one knows what you know what that means. And so we, we almost hide behind this word retirement, but what is retirement? It should be a future cash flow stream. And so if we had that end in mind, we may think differently about it. I think with the end in mind, I was saving Covey. Yes. Remember this even thing with the end in mind. So that's the purpose of retirement plan. But in America, we've gotten so far off the rails. But the rest, but the research job done, the rest of the world doesn't think like us. Yeah. You know, hence, you know, we're one of the worst in the civilized world. Okay. So now we're going to talk about pirates in Manhattan 3. You talk about indexing before we get into like the details, zoom out. What was pirates in Manhattan 1 and 2 and why are you writing a third and I feel like I don't want to put words in your mouth, but this is kind of like the trilogy and maybe the last pirates in the Hatton book. Yeah, it could be. Well, what it was and, you know, this is kind of funny, the true story. But when I wrote the first pirate's book, I was on a beach and Port Ave, out of Mexico at the time. And I was reading a book and I'd read about leverage bias and I said, I read a lot and I miss all this stuff. But you know, so I started reading about private equity and I said, man, I said, this stuff is bad. I didn't even figure it out. But so it kind of put on the, so I wrote the first pirate's book, you know, and then I wrote the Pirates 2, which is about target date point, which is another way for Walls 3, 2, essentially control your savings. And then I wrote guaranteed income. But I started on this journey and I and I said, you know, there's more to this. There's really more to this. And and then I started studying all the bankruptcies of like a pirate equity companies and and and the port photo companies and just the massive scale on it. And I said, no one really understood this. So that's when, you know, I kind of go into my deep dive. And then it would really frighten me was how private equity was getting into retirement space and and and essentially and and using life insurance reserves as their piggy bank. Now the irony of the whole thing, I killed this house. Go all goes back to Drexel, Burnham, Lambert, when they collapsed in 1990 when the bankruptcy and then they brought first executive companies into it, which was executive life of New York and executive life of California. And it took 30 years, I mean, this is bad. I mean, so and so and I have all the document and research believe it or not. So but the same people were behind this stuff are now in the life insurance space. So I saw kind of the perfect storm. So we had we're really we're a shitty and the world league tables for retirement come. So I said, who's who's driving all the and I said, when the only places really say places put your money to the life company. But then when I started seeing all these private equity firms starting to buy into buying company and then off-shoring them into Bermuda and to the Cayman Islands or Malta and then they were getting to cap a reinsurance. I said, this is this is really this is not good. So so that's so the whole thing was the treat the trick was is doing the research and making it people simple. Yeah. And it's affecting everybody and and particularly things like healthcare. And so and I'm really not I'm just poor people on this. I'm not Republican or Democrat. I ended up with a late this at this point. But I just saw this incredible carnage within the economy caused by private equity. But now everyone all the estimators went everyone to put put their money into it. But it's another long term contract. But that began with your people's money. So so this is not going to end well. This is you know and and then I was a guy who was a blessing. I had a friend of mine Tom Gover. I don't know if you've ever met him. He'd be good for you. You're probably got some well. But he was I had done all the research while the bankruptcies not the dividend recapitalization which is which is gross what they're doing and then so I knew all these these bankruptcies and things like that. But then he we should show me the kind of the tricks that they were doing. They were off showing their companies in Bermuda and other companies. So they're operating on paper thin reserves. I said this is not kind of this is not good. So that's so that's why I started doing it. It's been a long long journey cave. I mean I work on it four to five hours every day. You know and then you know maintain a practice. But yeah. So but it is coming to fruition at this point. What do you do? So you what you said you wake up at 4 a.m. Yeah. And you wake up 4 a.m. and you go what do you research? What are you reading? Well I kind of weird and the stuff is that I I research bankruptcy reports. You know it's not people get off of I don't know for it. I get off of bankruptcy reports. You know some bankruptcy filings. And the funny thing is a lot of it is all available on the public domain. And so why bankruptcy filings? What do you learn through looking at that? Because I can say who's the who's the private equity firm behind it? Interesting because usually where there's blood in the water the sharks are going for. Yeah. Yeah. So so people say well banks I've never heard about you know bank well I mean this this this past week or a couple weeks ago. Stuart healthcare systems they went bankrupt. I don't know if you remember when they were they're based out of Dallas. I mean there's 33 hospitals in there now served by serverist capital and actually Elizabeth Warren actually she's going to kind of bring on the bill that because people have died because of private equity raping these companies. So but people say what what what that was? So ever heard Chrysler Motors? You ever hear of Toys and Russ? You ever hear of Paila Shoes? You ever hear of California Pizza Kitchen or Neiman Marcus? Yeah people say I say guess what? You're all in my private equity. So but the whole thing is so big as interest rates rise you know it's going to be more difficult for these guys to get traditional financing from banks. So they are in turn going after the private equity years going after the life insurance reserves that they're very you know large stewards of capital. So so stay tuned on it. Yeah so it's just so it's just but that you know so it's a it's a major problem. I think I might have to have you on like once a month and you can just give me like the summary of like here's who's going bank rupt and this is why it matters to you. One of the big insights that I got from your book and many people have gotten from your book is bank bank's own life insurance. Yeah you also look at corporations own life insurance. Are banks continuing to buy life insurance? Yeah they are they are and that's you know again this is going to be in the book and because everyone's asked me how do you find out how much banks and then they're making a difficult I mean you know even someone like a nerd like me is you have to really kind of go into the call report and you have to really be very patient and it used to be really easy two three four years ago you can go in and get the balance sheets. You can't get it anymore. So yeah they're still buying it and then would amaze me and as that is that all the buying institutions who are buying newities for their own the asset managers are buying newties for themselves. I love that. Yeah so do what they do and don't do what they say. Yeah so yeah so they this is essentially three insurance products if you will for retirement plans. When is called a buy-in which is essentially you're buying in your your insuring your you're returning over the insurance company the obligation of a pension plan and the the biggest one recently was IBM they bought one from 16 billion about 100,000 people Google that people didn't believe me any event but there's essentially three types of insurance products a buy-out which this was a buy-out for IBM then you have a buy-in maybe it's some part of it's a salary pension plan or someone's a union so maybe that is made just ensure the the salary portion not the union which would be something to collect a bargaining and then you have what it's called the long-javidities swap which essentially when a company like a like a who would be great a Deutsche Bank okay Deutsche Bank or UBS UBS used to be smart you know the major mess in bank so actually they're going to insurance companies and they're essentially saying look we don't know if we can manage this pension in this long term so we're going to an insurance company to make sure it works yeah so it's all true so this would be in the book as well but so like even Bank of America bought an energy for their own pension plan and the UK so it's really amazing when so you start digging and then so so one of the other things which I'd look at is pension risk transfers and the benefit of having the internet is that I was able to research this in the UK which is much bigger than than us but and and they're really the funny thing is Caleb you know why I get probably 85% of the information press releases so because when these companies do a big deal they all brag about it yeah you know so we insured IBM for a hundred thousand dollars a hundred thousand employees and we did sixteen but this press releases all over the place yeah well they do the same thing in the UK so I just Google it and then sometimes they'll be in Pond you know they'll be quoted in bonds yeah I mean I mean what do you call it dumb pounds yeah so I'll just do the conversion you know you know you know and so yeah so that was an amazing thing is that so 85% of my stuff isn't is impress releases and then the bankruptcy pilings they're all they they can't erase those stuff yet so a lot of the if you look at the US bankruptcy court and Delaware one of them in Delaware most of these bankruptcy happen and so this is all bearifiable so well you're watching tick-tock berries downloading bankruptcy documents and reading off last question before we wrap this thing up is indexing you're talking about you know pirates are going to have to agree and talking about indexing and some of the sketchy stuff that goes on there what what do you even mean by that and how can we well what can we learn from what you know about indexing well you know you know I'm kind of believing index I'm a closet indexer myself um can you say index you're talking about just like putting your money yeah the person buying for equity yeah yeah so you know and the and actually one of the things that benefited writing the books is that I could I could know Jack Boggo the ponder of Vanguard and he actually liked the research he actually recovered credit he says he working on a really big problem wow and he even Jack Boggo warned if too much the market becomes indexing then we have a major problem which we we're there interesting why well because there's no control I mean there's no storage and there's no loyalty if you get out of you get out of an index you could the volatility that a business could have would be treacherous and just if a company has a market cap I mean you'll see the bankruptcy which uh it's going to be in the first book all this back so we're going to bankrupt uh 80% of them we're involved with index funds but my point is with indexing it you know it doesn't protect people it doesn't provide retirement income yeah it's not a bad way to accumulate or being in the equities and protect yourself but it doesn't do anything for retirement income yeah so even you have so what you even have is black rock and this is a Larry think you know who they're the huge I mean they're they they eight hundred pound growl is it about ten trillion in assets under management mostly indexed because you and I helped them buy barclays when they went under 2009 you and I but so so black rock is the biggest eight hundred pound growl they're telling people that for retirement income now that people should using their their life pack paycheck program which is actually index fund within a new year so so this is part of the solution but I think they're going to be people going to be better off by dealing with someone like yourself who actually does a little more of my intuning and more research for quality I mean yeah one of the things too is quality never goes out of style you know so I think if you you know then you know if I could summarize our conversation obviously lots research I'm excited for our audience to be able to support you in your research and I have more ideas even off cameras about how we can make that happen but you you're pretty much your takeaways are safe more safe more safe more if the national average is under three percent for the United States it needs to be more like 20 or more so that's that's a huge thing and then think with the end in mind and that could look like different for if you're an entrepreneur that might look different than if you're someone who's going to work for someone or a W-2 person or a real estate investor but think with the end in mind and that worth in a lot of cases is the thing that a lot of people get seduced by but it really doesn't pay the bills at the end of the day and so future cash flow matters and don't be scared of certain products at Dave Ramsey said are bad because maybe you're going to be using those products not as accumulation tools but as distribution tools and so how's that for a summary of some of your work? Yeah yeah it's great yeah it's just yeah because I you know I think you know when you've been one in the US you kind of went in the lottery and the grand scheme of things but you know my concern really is that is the next generations you know a bit ability to buy a home and and things of that nature and and stay out of debt and and get a college education yeah a reasonable and I think it it more people will be educated the better off they're going to be and it's my it's my Caleb this is my kind of my take people were educated a hundred years ago without the internet yeah and I'm not I don't necessarily think that college is the solution no no no college no college that's an indoctrination system yeah no that's that's a huge part of the problem I agree I agree we the more technology comes out the more dumb we get and as a result it's discernment and wisdom sometimes goes out the window with that because history doesn't repeat itself to the T but as uh Morgan Howell's will say it's the same as usual he has a phenomenal book and he just pretty much says you know situations change with people don't and we just end up repeating a version of of the history and so it's very interesting stuff uh very thank you for coming on how can the people watching this or listening to this support you in your work yeah well first of all this sign up to go go to Barry James dyke.com um and just get on the email list and buy the books if you really want to understand this stuff um please do even if you're not going to read even if you're not going to read it buy it because it really does it supports your research yeah it's like it's like a very cheap way for us to keep people like you reading bankruptcy reports at 4 a.m because I'm telling you no one's no one's going for your job there no but I I pass it by the stuff yeah so yeah it's for the $80.90 bucks I mean it's gonna be the best I mean people have hundreds of thousands of dollars they're so cheap and people they're you know they're so cheap I mean and if you study you know and I you know I love the internet believe me and I subscribe to all the new services yeah one bird you name and I got them all yeah okay and I use my iPad you know but the true the best information still the best research is always still the written word yeah it's kind of like the Bible you know you know but at the best research is still the written word and when people go that's like me research the heck out of this stuff yeah and you're not going to get this from a from you know 15 you know a minute or two TikTok with all due respect to TikTok because yeah you know so so they're really to do the written word and and but what amazed me is when you start digging is that how huge the institutions are actually involved in this stuff yeah and so the blessing is for people like you is that we'll get this out in the mainstream media because you know the mainstream media is totally I think I'm thinking bigger with this show and I and again it's thanks to the people watching this it's like I'm like hey we actually potentially have influence here and we can potentially interview some people that could get people to think differently and our our whole purpose at better wealth is to get people to live intentionally like give people the permission to live in that's right and part of the way that we do that is try to shine a light on some of the sketchy things that are going on but also trying to highlight the people that are doing things right very thank you and I just I wanted to say this to you the listener or person that's watching this on YouTube person that watches clips on our other social media like you give us the ability to interview people like Barry so if you are not subscribed to this channel there's like over 50% of people that watch our videos Barry are not subscribed so if you're if you're watching this and not subscribed it really helps us out if you hit that subscribe button and sharing this information really helps us out and if you have a question that you want Barry to answer if you put it in the comments below I'm blessed to be friends with him and I can get him the questions and maybe we can have another fireside chat when your book comes out and I can ask questions of our community and so Barry thank you and God bless I look forward to future conversations thanks Caleb you're the best